Tuesday, June 22, 2010

THEME: GHOST (36A: Word game ... or a word that can precede the starts of 18-, 26-, 43- and 54-Across) — clue pretty much says it all: GHOST TOWN, GHOST SHIP, GHOSTBUSTER, GHOST STORY

Word of the Day: GHOST —

Ghost is a word game in which players take turns adding letters to a growing word fragment, trying not to be the one to complete a valid word. If a player completes a word, they lose that round of the game and starts a new round. Each fragment must be the beginning of an actual word. Usually some minimum is set on the length of a word that counts, such as three or four letters. (wikipedia)

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Though I feel as if I've said this before, I'll say it now anyway: I've never heard of "GHOST." This made not one bit of difference to my ability to solve this puzzle quickly, which says something about how much gleaning the theme means to my efficient dispatching of early-week puzzles (not at all, usually). I was impressed by the wide open spaces in the N-to-W and E-to-S sections, and I thought the bottom half of the grid in particular was very smoothly filled. Not fond of the "OF" pile-up. Don't like words recurring. Don't like words recurring *and* intersecting. So recurring and intersecting and intersecting again!? Superbad. And not the good kind of superbad. The bad kind (TEN OF, A LOT OF, SHIP OF ...). There's oddly a lot of intersecting letter strings to go with this OF madness, including two four-letter strings (AIREs in East, ARKSs in West), and two more threes (BUS and ERR, both in SW). The latter are negligible and I wouldn't have gone looking for them had there not been the fours and the OFs.

Theme answers are boring and this "word that can precede" stuff is pretty old hat—needs something odd or spicy to make it interesting. I guess no good phrases start with "WHISPERER" or "WRITER" or "FACE KILLAH."

Theme answers:

18A: Governing body of a municipality (TOWN COUNCIL)

26A: 1965 Vivien Leigh movie ("SHIP OF FOOLS")

43A: Old comics boy with the dog Tige (BUSTER BROWN)

54A: Center of attention around a campfire say (STORY TELLER)

Only hold-up of any note came as I tried to escape the NW. PAWN ... ? TICKET never occurred to me (3D: Hockshop receipt). Even now, it seems too simple, despite clearly being right. I'm pretty sure my brain went "BROKER?" and then quit. I ended up picking up that western section at the very end of the solve. Other miscues: BACK DOOR for SIDE DOOR (51A: Delivery entrance, maybe); HEEDS for HARKS (27D: Pays attention); COYOTE for PEYOTE — that was a no-look entry that backfired (62A: Hallucinogen-yielding cactus); and RESINS (?) for STAINS (59A: Deck treatments). Despite my well-documented non-love for "Seinfeld," I managed to pick up the ELAINE / JERRY pair easily (15A: Sitcom pal of 46-Down + 46D: Former boyfriend of 15-Across). In fact, I wrote in ELAINE from just a cross or two, and just hoped that the cross-referenced clue would somehow involve "Seinfeld"; bingo.

Bullets:

4A: Female TV dog played by males (LASSIE) — so this is why we never see LASSIE pee...

29D: Field of Plato and Aristotle (PHILOSOPHY) — just before solving, I was reading about artist Cy Twombly's "Five Greek Poets and a Philosopher" in John Waters' (new, excellent, inspirational) memoir, "Role Models." Names scrawled on pieces of white paper in giant, uneven caps. Of potential puzzling interest: Twombly served in the army as a cryptologist (wikipedia).

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comments:

Easy, straightforward Tuesday puzzle that played out like a Monday for me. Nothing particularly challenging here, which is just fine.

I noticed the GLUT of Os and Fs in the NW region with the intersecting OFs. Thought it a bit strange and then moved on.

I've heard of GHOST, but have never played it and didn't really know exactly how it worked.

Speaking of "Box Office Hit" (SMASH), on a recent NY trip I caught the new Broadway production of August Wilson's drama Fences with Denzel Washington and Viola Davis. In a word: stunning. Theatre was mobbed playing at 102% of capacity. Definitely SRO.

Never heard of ghost either. Rest of puzzle was easy. How Rex managed to mention Twombly from this puzzle is strange but I think he's a terrific artist so no complaints. Especially since I'm not a Seinfeld fan and think his sitcom was the most overrated show on TV. His zillion car garage is down the block from me, btw.

I would just like to point out that those south-of-the-border outlaws are BANDIDOS, not BANDITOS. That's the Spanish spelling; and since there is an explicit distinction here as to from where they are, I think the answer is wrong. I left my puzzle reading ALODOF. Same thing, right?

Howdy. I didn't much care for this one, although 62A reminded me of a few wonderful weekends in college. I have a horticulturist friend who still has some growing in his greenhouse, and we occasionally threaten to relive our youthful indiscretions, but so far it's been all talk, no cactus. YET.

Used to play Ghost in the car with the family. Kinda like when you text and the phone suggests what words you might be typing. It was a fine puzzle, but I really didn't like the entry "STORY TELLER" because those stories around the campfire are usually Ghost Stories, so the entry kinda became GHOST STORY TELLER, which isn't what this puzzle was about. No matter. Back to what you were doing ...

We played GHOST around the dinner table when there were combined families together... Three-letter words didn't count toward the penalty of being the person who had to end a word, but ending a longer word as choices of an added letter narrowed got you a letter toward the five in the word G-H-O-S-T. You could also get a letter if you challenged the person before you to prove he had a real word and you lost.

When you had all five of the letters, you were out of the spelling contest -- but you were a Ghost and no one was supposed to speak to you! If you could trick someone into responding to your questions, that person also became a Ghost... It worked well with the kids, with much giggling and nobody asking to be excused from the table.

Actually, bandito is the original spelling, straight from Italian. The 1591 citation M-W refers to is from 2 Henry VI (see line 2303). The spelling "bandito" and "banditti" persisted until the 19th century, when "bandit" became preferred. Because the original Italian is closer to the Spanish, it continued to be used for Mexican outlaws.

We actually used to play GHOST in the car on vacations.SHIP OF FOOLS is one of my favorite movies. Simon the dog was often called, "Simone Signoret," (the "worldly" woman in that movie) even though Simon was male.Rex posted an old Hippie sign, the likes I recall seeing.PEYOTE was in the puzzle. I anticipate a story from @dk.PHILOSOPHY will hopefully bring @clark to the fore.Today is Garfield's birthday, isn't it?Here comes the sun.Life is good.

Easier than yesterday for me. Also had BANDIDOS but was willing to be flexible when A LOT OF appeared. A LOT OF describes how much GHOST we played in college. Favorite memory was when Allen Van Gelder added a D to CROQU and responded CROQUDILE to the inevitable challenge.

What an eclectic puzzle - we do PEYOTE (perhaps looking out for the SFPD), have MEHTA CDs, know ELAINE and JERRY, are HIP enough to say PHAT, and have a baseball player next to a shock jock. Something for everybody - and I bet others googled SHIP OF FOOLS too.

I was surprised that most of the early responders had not heard of GHOST. One of the advantages of my age (and perhaps for those others very familiar with the game) is that playing ghost was preferable to the current family entertainment of looking at TV or twittering.

Thanks Frito Bandito!You are exactly why I put in the "t" without hesitating.Easy puzzle without much of a payoff.I did like all of the canine answers and clues. 38A nearly was one too, as in Airedale.I forgot to say Happy Solstice yesterday. I can't say that I enjoy watching the days grow shorter now.

Old Sol Bloom lay dying in his bed, when he suddenly smelled the aroma of his favorite strudel wafting up the stairs. He gathered his remaining strength and lifted himself from the bed. Leaning against the wall, he slowly made his way out of the bedroom and forced himself down the stairs, gripping the railing with both hands. With labored breath, he leaned against the door frame, gazing into the kitchen.

If it weren't for the pain in his chest, he would have thought he was already in Heaven. There, spread out on paper towels on the kitchen table, were literally hundreds of pieces of his favorite pastry. Sol smile; this was one final act of love from his devoted wife, Sophie, seeing to it that he left this world a happy man.

With quivering hand he reached for a piece of the strudel. Suddenly he felt the slap of a spatula.

"Stay out of those," Sophie said. "They're for after."

(from Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates by Cathcart and Klein.)

It’s an odd day when the most interesting thing about a Barry Silk puzzle is the number of unsurprising write-overs built into it. CITY/TOWN COUNCIL, RATIO/TEN OF, HEMP/JUTE, and BACK/SIDE DOOR. UTES/OTOE could easily enough have been on the list, but the coin toss went my way (shoulda checked a cross or two, but that would’ve taken more time than just fixing the squares as I came back across them).

Also had D as in BANDIDO till I checked before printing and noticed A LOD OF. An amount just short of a LOAD, I guess.

Sometimes I overthink answers, I guess... it didn't occur to me that 29D (field of Plato and Aristotle) could be as obvious as "PHILOSOPHY." I was thinking it had to be, I dunno, metaphysics, or epistemology or something. Maybe that's what they would do on Thursday or later.

And even when I had the beginning "P" filled in, my first thought was "PEDOPHILIA." Maybe I need help.

Things I had just learned, but didn't seem to help me none: SUVA (capital of Fiji), MENEM (Carlos ___, former Argentine prez where "the peso stops here" at), MEDE (subject of Cyrus the Great). They was all in Erul's last puz. (Thanks to T-Rex, Erul did not play the backwards-word card one time.)

Thumbs up! Nice, wide open grid for a TuesPuz, 'cept for its engine light comin' on, in that F-over-FF area.

The etymology may be "definitive," but it is irreverent to the clue at hand. The clue asks for SOUTH OF THE BORDER. Last time I checked, that means Mexico, not Spain. In Mexico the word is bandidos, not banditos.

This issue reminds me of the people who justify the correctness of "nan" as a proper spelling for a clue about the INDIAN flatbread. "Nan" has never been used in India, in any Indian restaurant, or in any Indian home at any point in time. "Nan," on the other hand, is used in some Turkic languages for a type of flatbread. If the answer to the clue is going to be "nan," it is blatantly incorrect to use the Indian flatbread as the clue.

"Bandito" is an English word with an Italian origin. Did you read the M-W entry? The definition of "bandito" is "an outlaw especially of Mexican extraction or origin." "South-of-the-border" just means "Mexican." That definition and the clue are an exact match. Assuming you meant "irrelevant," I don't understand the reason. Nowhere in the discussion today did Spain come up.

I'm yet another person who never heard of Ghost as a game. And another person for whom the theme revealer contributed nothing to my ability to solve the puzzle. Breezed through this one in what's a slightly slow Monday time for me.

I'm prone to arguing a fair number of Martin's defenses as being too literal, not considering actual usage, etc., but the defense of BANDITO is unassailable in this case. BANDITO is in fact an English word meaning a Mexican bandit. While the "south of the border" qualifier is used frequently as an indicator of a foreign word, there's nothing that says that's exclusively what that phrase can mean.

And I love Indian flatbread, regardless of whether it's spelled naan or nan or even non (not to mention the inherent futility of arguing the correct spelling of a transliterated word).

@clark - excellent! Reminds me of a tale where it turns out Descartes really wrote for posterity, "I think they're for 1 a.m."

@mac, I always spelled it "kebobs," but that could be Midwestern cookbooks

Our weekend guests divided evenly between Sudoku and the crossword puzzle over Sunday brunch and there ensued a lengthy back-and-forth on the virtues of each, the likes of which you hear on the PC-Mac commercials.

The problem with 'nan' as a variant spelling is the fact that it allows for a mispronunciation of the word, one that rhymes with the name 'Dan.' Naan is pronounced like 'Caan,' as in James Caan. Interesting to see and hear that many restaurants in NYC spell it that way. I've never seen it spelled that way anywhere. I suppose one restaurant's mistake lead to a chain reaction of sorts.

As for banditos and bandidos, I think Martin and the others are correct in saying the former is right on the money.

The puzzle itself? Felt more like a Monday and was quite ho-hum IMO.

Fantastic site by the way, Rex. The folks posting comments are also awesome! I should really register or something.

@anonymous at 5:40, do come join us and get an avatar so that we can recognize you when we scan the posts. (We always look for Rex's Captain Billy, too, so we can make sure we are behaving ourselves.)@Jesser drove in unannounced and now we see him coming in his wild-ass Jeep.

(Stanza 2)I hear in the chamber above meThe patter of little feet,The sound of a door that is opened,And voices soft and sweet.(3)From my study I see in the lamplight,Descending the broad hall stair,Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,And Edith with golden hair.(8)Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,Because you have scaled the wall,Such an old mustache as I amIs not a match for you all!

This week's relative difficulty ratings. See my 7/30/2009 post for an explanation. In a nutshell, the higher the ratio, the higher this week's median solve time is relative to the average for the corresponding day of the week.

All solvers (this week's median solve time, average for day of week, ratio, percentile, rating)